John Rossi

Matthew Bonnan

Vertebrae Paleontology

April 14, 2021

Introduction: Dinosaurs and mammals, who walk upright, have a very distinct way of walking.

Aside from just walking on two legs instead of four, the way they take their steps and strids are

different as well. When someone sees a four-legged animal walking they are quick to notice that

(unless the animal is galloping) they will typically have two legs down at a time to keep a form

of balance. This is not true for those who are bipedal as they only have two legs. When it comes

to bipedal animals, they typically use pendulum principles. Pendulum principle is essentially

saying that the legs of the bipedal animal are the swinging pendulum, and the base is the hip

bone. The weight that is on the end of the pendulum is typically the heavier muscles that allow

for bipedal animal to walk. The best example to look at are humans and the Tyrannosaurus rex

(T.rex). In humans we can see with every step how one leg will fall in front of the other. Now

imagine the femur and the muscles surrounding the femur are the weight on a pendulum. When

looking at the human it is possible to see that because there is a longer femur in relativity to the

tibia, that we humans have a larger walking stride length. As the pendulum (femur) would swing

(the hip is the base) this would allow for the center of gravity (which is the body) to lean forward

a bit. This allows for the human to move faster over land as it can cover more ground with a long

stride and a weight consistently pushing it forward. Now it’s not like humans cannot stand on

their own. There are muscles in the back and legs of bipedal animals that allow them to stay

standing in place.
 Now this principle of the pendulum is also in the animal known as the T. rex. The T. rex

is a massive dinosaur that weighed several tons and lived millions of years ago. When looking at

a T. rex skeleton/rendered image, it clearly walks on two legs, but is so much larger than that of a

human. So how did they balance out their weight. Well in a T. rex their pendulum is a little

different than that of humans or smaller bipedal animals. Since the muscles had to be so large in

a T. rex to keep it up, they weigh a lot. Now if a human’s femur and muscles weighed more, we

would be slower when moving, but this is not the case of the T. rex. For the T. rex the hip bone

was higher up on the animal’s body, allowing the femur to not extend as far away from the

center of gravity of the T. rex. Then when looking at the rest of the leg it is relatively light

compared to that of the femur and its muscles. Adding all of this up allows us to paint a picture

that suggests the base of this pendulum would be the hip bone, the weight would be the femur

and its muscles, and the actual swinging pendulum part is the entire leg. Since the T. rex is

naturally larger than that of a human, the stride length is also larger than that of a human.

Knowing all this information and being able to look at a T. rex, I believe it is clear to say that a

T. rex could run at speeds faster than its walking speeds, but I do not believe that the larger a T.

rex gets the faster it would be. If anything, I would say that the larger a T. rex got the less likely

it is to run as fast as it did when it was smaller due to the massive size and weight of this

dinosaur. The larger the T. rex the slower and less likely it would be to run.

Now there are measurements that allow for us to be able to see if the animal (usually

using bones and fossils) could run at faster speeds and if it would do it often. These

measurements are called the runner’s ratio. The runner’s ratio is when the length of the tibia and

the metatarsus are added and then divided by the length of the femur. This will then create a

ratio, and if the ratio is 1 or greater than the animal is mor likely to be a runner most of its life.
“How an upright, parasagittal posture is like a pendulum. In dinosaurs and many archosaurs, the

upright stance essentially transforms the hind limb into a pendulum that swings (oscillates) with

a frequency correlated with femur length. A longer femur covers more ground per swing, but has

a lower frequency, whereas a shorter femur covers less ground with each stride but has a

naturally higher frequency” (Bonnan 2016). Now if the ratio is below 1 then it is most likely not

a runner for most of its life. This does not mean it cannot run, it just means that animal is less

likely to be seen running as it puts a lot of stress and pressure on the bones on the animal. Now

there has been data given with five different T. rex’s and using this data we will be able to tell if

the T. rex is a runner or not using the ratio.

Data:

Table 1

Specimen Tibia Femur Runner Runner or

(mm) (mm) Ratio Walker

Carnegie 1775 1265 1.4031620 Runner

6
Sue 1988 1312 1.5152439 Runner
Stan 1790 1278 1.4006259 Runner

8
MOR 1775 1280 1.3867187 Runner

5
Jane 1337 788 1.6967005 Runner

1
This table represents the lengths of each T. rex’s Tibia and Femur in millimeters. The runner

ratio is the Tibia divided by the Femur length. Having a runner ratio of more than one indicates

the T. rex was a runner.

Graph 1
 Femur (mm) vs. Tibia (mm)

2000 Sue
(Largest)
1800
Tibia (mm)

1600
Jane
1400 (smallest)

1200

1000
700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400
Femur (mm)

This graph represents the Femur length vs. the Tibia length. As noted on the graph the lowest

point is Jane, the smallest of the T. rex’s and sue is the highest point as she is largest of the

group. The x-axis starts at 700 mm as there are no femur lengths shorter than that and the y-axis

starts at 1000 mm as there are no smaller tibia lengths that this among the group.

Discussion: The hypothesis I believed was that as the larger the T. rex where to grow, the harder

it would be for it run, therefore it the runner ratio would go down and the T. rex would not run as

much or as fast. Now it is true to say that the running ratio did go down as the dinosaurs got

larger (clearly shown with Janes running ratio of 1.696 and Sue’s running ratio of 1.51) but this

does not mean the larger the T. rex the slower. No this is far from true. As shows in the data, Sue

has a much larger Tibia then MOR, but the femur length of each is almost the same. Sue has a

larger femur at 1312 mm compared to MOR’s 1280 mm, but this is a relatively close number.

The real difference is in the femur, which Sue has a femur length of 1988 mm compared to
MOR’s 1775 mm. The difference is almost 200 mm. Due to this difference in tibia size, the

runner ratios are completely different. Sue, while she maybe the largest in the group, actually has

the second-best running ratio due to the fact that the tibia is so much larger than its femur. MOR

had the worst running ratio with a 1.38 running ratio. This is because the tibia is not too much

larger than the femur. This proves my hypothesis wrong, as I believed the T. rex would slow

down much more as it got older, but this turns out the be false. With Sue being the largest, I

believed her running ratio would be the slowest, but this is not true. Even the T. rex’s with the

lowest running ratios, they each still have one above a 1.3, which shows that they are still very

capable of running at just about any time. No matter the size or age of the Tyrannosaurus rex is a

runner.
 Work Cited

Bonnan, M.F. 2016. The Bare Bones: An Unconventional Evolutionary History of the Skeleton.

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 512 pp.